4 ms·

>Echo is doing far more surreptitious surveillance and analysis, i.e. not just listening for the trigger word This should be trivial to prove.

jeremyjh 8y ago
It has been demonstrated that it does not send network traffic apart from requests made to it; e.g. it is not continuously streaming data. Of course that could be changed at any time with a software update that you have no choice about accepting. To prove it is not recording locally could be much more difficult, but there are practical questions there. What media is it recording to, and if the recordings are never sent to the cloud, what is the purpose of keeping them?
- andrepd 8y ago
  That does not demonstrate anything. It could "buffer" the data it wants to send and only send it after the trigger word is detected, precisely to trick such naive analysis.
  - hiram112 8y ago
    I would hope the researchers were competent enough to space out their explicit uploads with varying periods of noise, while also finding a decent approximation of how much data is uploaded per x seconds of audio. Sure, Amazon could use all sorts of tricks to attempt to throw off reverse engineering, but it would be pretty hard to do so with a large enough set of tests.
  - jeremyjh 8y ago
    That would result in a much larger payload, and a payload size that is variable depending on how long it has been, and how much audio was record-able between requests. But if instead we observe a small payload of constant size given the same request, regardless of how long between requests, then we can reasonably be assured the device is not doing this.
    - tkxxx7 8y ago
      Or you can be reasonably sure the device is only sending a payload of max size N at a time, padding your requests with some recording data when it can
      - jeremyjh 8y ago
        Any smart tv could be doing the same thing. Why do you think that Amazon in particular is likely to be conducting a massive, secret and illegal surveillance operation?
        tkxxx7 8y ago
        Many smart TVs have already been found to spy on you. Which answers your question.
        andrepd 8y ago
        >Any smart tv could be doing the same thing. And many have been found to, which kind of proves my point. >Why do you think that Amazon in particular is likely to be conducting a massive, secret and illegal surveillance operation? Uhm, because it makes money? Isn't that the answer to any "why" in our current economic system?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    How do we know your laptop is not doing this? Or your phone? Or your TV? In fact, it seems more likely that your laptop would be doing this give that it probably has far more electronics inside it.

jeremyjh 8y ago

It has been demonstrated that it does not send network traffic apart from requests made to it; e.g. it is not continuously streaming data. Of course that could be changed at any time with a software update that you have no choice about accepting. To prove it is not recording locally could be much more difficult, but there are practical questions there. What media is it recording to, and if the recordings are never sent to the cloud, what is the purpose of keeping them?

andrepd 8y ago
That does not demonstrate anything. It could "buffer" the data it wants to send and only send it after the trigger word is detected, precisely to trick such naive analysis.
- hiram112 8y ago
  I would hope the researchers were competent enough to space out their explicit uploads with varying periods of noise, while also finding a decent approximation of how much data is uploaded per x seconds of audio. Sure, Amazon could use all sorts of tricks to attempt to throw off reverse engineering, but it would be pretty hard to do so with a large enough set of tests.
- jeremyjh 8y ago
  That would result in a much larger payload, and a payload size that is variable depending on how long it has been, and how much audio was record-able between requests. But if instead we observe a small payload of constant size given the same request, regardless of how long between requests, then we can reasonably be assured the device is not doing this.
  - tkxxx7 8y ago
    Or you can be reasonably sure the device is only sending a payload of max size N at a time, padding your requests with some recording data when it can
    - jeremyjh 8y ago
      Any smart tv could be doing the same thing. Why do you think that Amazon in particular is likely to be conducting a massive, secret and illegal surveillance operation?
      - tkxxx7 8y ago
        Many smart TVs have already been found to spy on you. Which answers your question.
      - andrepd 8y ago
        >Any smart tv could be doing the same thing. And many have been found to, which kind of proves my point. >Why do you think that Amazon in particular is likely to be conducting a massive, secret and illegal surveillance operation? Uhm, because it makes money? Isn't that the answer to any "why" in our current economic system?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  How do we know your laptop is not doing this? Or your phone? Or your TV? In fact, it seems more likely that your laptop would be doing this give that it probably has far more electronics inside it.